


more clay than stone

by baroquemirrors



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27323893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baroquemirrors/pseuds/baroquemirrors
Summary: There isn’t much of a plan when they get to the States, except to see where Dani’s Honda Accord and a roadmap take them. Unfortunately, the country turns out to be full of ghosts.(Canon compliant up to Dani and Jamie leaving Bly.)
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 19
Kudos: 97





	1. well I was out for a walk

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of fluff, and definitely some angst. I couldn't stop thinking about how this extremely cursed continent would affect our newly ghost-sensitive girl. This story will likely feature some reflections on the spooky emptiness of the vast American interior, and also a lot of hotels where people have clearly been murdered.

There isn’t much of a plan when they get to the States, except to see where Dani’s Honda Accord and a roadmap take them.

There are things she wants Jamie to see, things she didn’t even realize she missed about home until she started thinking about returning. Things like watching rainstorms at a distance in the Iowa sky; how you can see the entire shape of them, a streaky blur distorting the world miles away while you stand dry in a patch of sunlight. Things like evening drives and long sunsets. She thinks Jamie will like those; thinks she’ll like the dive bars, too. Dani wants to see her leaning over a game of pool with a bottle of Schell’s or Grain Belt in one hand and a cue stick in the other, winking from across the table.

Mostly, she just wants Jamie. The _where_ doesn’t really matter.

She has some concerns, though, about going back across the pond together—namely, about transporting this fledgling love of theirs out of the idyllic English countryside and back into the land of strip malls and drive-throughs. What if Dani no longer seems so charmingly American once everyone around her is, well, exactly the same? What if Jamie gets tired of her?

And then there’s the teensy little problem of the ghostly passenger now riding along in Dani’s body—a problem she's reminded of as she catches sight of her reflection, mismatched eyes staring back at her from the latticed window on mother's front door.

"Shit," she mutters.

Jamie’s hand slides past Dani’s hip and comes to rest on the small of her back. “What’s wrong?”

“My eyes,” Dani says. “My _eyes_ are wrong. They’re two different colors.” 

This is not new information, obviously. She’s had weeks to get accustomed to it, weeks of staring in the mirror trying to decide whether the newly brown iris was _hers_ or not, but somehow it didn't seem like a problem, practically speaking, until just now.

“How am I going to explain this?” she asks desperately. “I mean, how _can_ I explain it? I just— I didn’t—“

“Hey,” Jamie interrupts. Her voice is steady. “It’ll be fine. You can have my sunnies.” She unslings her backpack, fumbling with the outer pocket in search of the glasses.

But the door swings open before she can locate them, and suddenly Dani’s mom is standing there, and Dani feels a hot rush of dread that has nothing to do with the color of her irises.

“Danielle!” Her mom is holding a cocktail glass in one hand, but the other flings wide with excitement to pull Dani into a one-armed hug. 

“Hi, mom.” Dani murmurs, crushed awkwardly against her mother’s bosom. 

“Oh, sweetheart. I thought you’d never come back.” Karen peers past her daughter and catches Jamie’s eye. “I thought she’d never come back,” she repeats, conspiratorially, as if sharing gossip over a game of Bridge. “You must be Danielle’s friend from London!”

Beside her Jamie shifts her weight awkwardly from one foot to the other. “Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Clayton.”

Dani glances at Jamie, at the hedges beside the front steps, at her own feet--anywhere but at her mother, because she really doesn’t know what she’ll say when Karen finally notices that one of her daughter’s eyes somehow turned brown in the past eight months. 

But she doesn’t notice; not there on the doorstep, nor when she hands each of them a Cosmo without asking whether they actually wanted one. 

They make it through forty-five minutes of excruciating small talk, carefully avoiding any discussion of what actually happened at Bly, before excusing themselves to go pack up the last of Dani’s things that she’d left stored at her mom’s house. That’s the reason they’re here, really—so that Dani can throw the last of her stuff in a box, toss it in the backseat of the Honda, and then hit the road with the business of her old life left comfortably behind her.

“Can you believe that?” She bursts out, as soon as the bedroom door is closed. “She didn’t even notice!” She combs her fingers through her hair in frustration. “Unbelievable. Actually, no. Of course I can believe it. Because she never notices anything about me. Not a single thing. Never has.”

But Jamie is distracted, looking around with interest at the clutter of Dani’s old room, which her mother never bothered to redecorate. It’s all still here: the painted white furniture and the posters on the wall, the Sonny and Cher album covers, the old Tiger Beat photos of David Cassidy and Donny Osmond.

It’s weird, how Dani should be thinking about all of the times she and Eddie sat on her bed together, as children and then teens and then young adults on break from college—but she isn’t.  Because instead she’s thinking about how she’s in her teenage bedroom with the woman she’s sort-of-maybe-definitely in love with, and it’s weird and embarrassing and also, because Jamie is sliding her hands into her pockets and stepping toward Dani with a purposeful look in her eyes, sort of a turn-on.

“Ever cop off with any girls in here, Poppins?”

Dani can guess what that means. “No,” she says, with a bashful smile. Never girls. Just Eddie.

“Hm.” Jamie steps closer, encircling Dani’s wrists with her fingers and then placing Dani’s hands on her own hips. “Would’ya like to?” 

Dani blushes. “I— my mom..."

"Best be quiet, then." 

And then Jamie’s lips are trailing across her jaw, and her hands are sliding around Dani’s waist and down over the curve of her ass, and suddenly it’s all Dani can do keep herself from making the kind of sounds her mother would _definitely_ hear all the way in the living room.

She glances over at the door to make sure it’s firmly closed and catches sight of her reflection in the mirror. She can see her mismatched eyes, yes, but there’s nothing else to be scared of. No glowing glasses or dark silhouettes—just herself, tilting her head to allow access as Jamie tugs her turtleneck out of the way.

“Jamie…”

“Shh,” Jamie reminds her, smiling into the crook of Dani’s neck. The way she kisses her there is deliberately messy and juvenile, as if she’s play-acting the naughty teenager, and Dani laughs and tugs at her hair to make her stop so they can kiss each other properly. 

“Hey,” she says, pausing for a moment. “Thank you. For coming here with me. For making this… easier.” 

“Dani. I _want_ to be here.”

“Oh.” It still feels surprising, that Jamie wants her. Wants to be around her. It feels surprising and impossible and miraculous, that Jamie is her… her girlfriend. Maybe. They haven’t talked about it, haven’t put a name to it, but—

“Hey, Poppins. Where’d you go?” Jamie’s thumb strokes her cheek, then brushes away an errant lock of hair and tucks it behind her ear.

“Nowhere.” Dani smiles, leaning in to press her forehead against Jamie’s. “I’m right here. With you.”

—

They’re both exhausted by the time they check into a hotel for the night—a cheap, barely two-star establishment that nevertheless appeals to Dani as the first place she and Jamie can spend the night together without children sleeping a few rooms away. 

“Right,” Jamie says, dropping the last of their bags on the floor beside one of the double beds. “I’ll go find us something to eat.” 

“Want me to come with?” Dani asks, but Jamie just smiles, tangling their fingers together briefly to give Dani’s a squeeze. 

“Nah,” she says. “You settle in. Try to relax maybe, yeah?”

People have been telling Dani to relax for, well, most of her life. She’s not very good at it, but she’s also running out of excuses. She doesn’t have a job, currently. There are no kids to look after. So she tries.

She runs a bath hot enough to steam up the bathroom mirror and then climbs in. The tub isn’t large, but Dani is short enough that she can nearly lie flat in it anyway. She bends her knees and slides as low as she can into the water, until her ears are submerged and the whir of the bathroom fan is drowned out by the lapping of the water and rhythmic pulse of her own heartbeat. 

It’s too fast, she realizes. Her breathing is a little too quick, like she’s bracing herself for something. 

And the second she realizes it, the second she stops focusing on the wall of denial she’s been laboriously propping up all day, she can feel it—something not-normal pressing into her, its fingers scrabbling at the invisible line where Dani ends and it begins. A pressure at the base of her skull, growing more insistent with every passing moment.

“It’s okay,” she says aloud. “It’s okay. I’m safe. I’m fine.”

She’s not sure who she’s trying to reassure—herself, or her passenger--and that just makes it worse.

_I’m safe,_ she thinks stubbornly. Everything is still and quiet, and soon Jamie will be back and they’ll sit in bed eating food from takeout containers and watching bad American television, and it will all be perfectly splendid.

Except there’s a ringing in her ears, even under the water. And underneath the ringing, something else: a sound; a voice.

A soft, whimpering cry, belonging to a child. 

Dani sits up in the water, waits for the sluice and splash of it to settle and strains her ears to listen. She hears it again: a soft, keening cry. Whoever it is, they’re terrified.

She gets out of the tub hastily, without thinking, wrapping a towel around herself and stumbling out of the bathroom on slippery feet. The cry is getting louder with every step. 

It’s _too_ loud. It’s filling her head, bursting against her eardrums, and the pain in that little voice leaves her breathless. She wants to sob, or cover her ears, but she has to _find_ her—the little girl, the little girl who’s hurting and needs her help, and—

“Dani?”

Suddenly a hand is on her shoulder, and she gasps, and at the same time hears Jamie asking, “Jesus, what’s going on?”

Because Dani is in the hotel hallway wrapped in nothing but a towel, dripping water onto the carpet. And there’s no one else here. Just the two of them, and Jamie’s expression is clouded with concern.

“I don’t… I don’t know.” 

She can’t remember walking out here. Can’t remember anything past being in the tub and feeling like something was wrong, like there was something she was supposed to be doing. 

Jamie’s touch on her shoulder is delicate, like she’s stroking the petals of a flower. “Well, is there a reason you’re out here nearly starkers?”

“I think— I can’t remember, I…” she trails off, confused. “I’m… sorry. I don’t know what happened.”

Jamie’s brow is furrowed, and she stares at Dani searchingly, like there are more questions perched on the tip of her tongue. But she must read something in Dani’s expression that makes her change her mind, because she shakes her head almost imperceptibly, and then lets out a breath. 

“Right, well. Come on then.” She nods her head toward the door and brandishes the plastic bag she’s holding, which looks to be full of styrofoam containers. “The food looks like shite, if I’m being honest, but the portions are massive.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s normal.”

“Huge appetites, you Americans,” Jamie teases, ushering Dani back into the room and closing the door behind her.

“Mhm. For food, and for… other things.” 

“Oh, is that right?” 

And Dani smiles at her, letting her towel slip just a little as she heads off to the bathroom, noticing the way Jamie’s eyes drop to glance suggestively at the exposed tops of her breasts before she turns away. And she tries to enjoy it, this easy, flirtatious way of being around each other—but underneath her smile she’s uneasy. 

Because she really, truly can’t remember why she walked out into the hallway, except that she knows it has something to do with her passenger, her ghost—the _thing_ inside her head.  She can feel its rage, prickling at her belly. There’s a headache coming on, she thinks. It’s angry with her. But she won’t let it take this, not _this,_ her hard-won and fragile happiness. She leans over the sink and rests her head against the cool countertop until the anger pulsing at her temples subsides. 

When she emerges clean and dressed, her wall of determination rebuilt, Jamie takes Dani in her arms and kisses her.  It's long and soft and slow, and Dani allows herself to sink into it, into Jamie's embrace, until there's no room left in her mind for anything or anyone other than the two of them.


	2. somewhere I can't be found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So. We’re here, away from Bly. Having a boring breakfast in a boring old diner, before we get in the car for a long, boring drive. And I just… I don’t want to mess that up.”
> 
> Because she doesn’t want to think about ghosts or beasts in the jungle or strange, unexplainable memory lapses in the middle of the night. She just wants to think about Jamie—about her mussed hair and the little smear of syrup glistening at the corner of her mouth, and how strangely elegant her hands look while holding the cheap cutlery.
> 
> “I mean, can’t we just be boring for a while? Don’t we deserve that, after everything?”

Dani learned at a young age that the best days start with a big breakfast. 

Her mom wasn’t much of a cook; she barely managed mac and cheese from a box for dinner, let alone a full meal first thing in the morning. On the days when Dani actually ate before school it was a bowl of cereal. But at some point, after Dani started spending afternoons and then dinners at the O’Mara’s, she started having Sunday breakfast there too. 

She had loved those mornings when, after biking over to their house in her church clothes, she’d join Eddie’s brothers at the table and his mom would pile her plate with bacon, eggs, and fruit cut into neat wedges. They’d spend an hour talking about nothing in particular—school and the Sunday funnies and whatever ongoing argument Carson and Eddie were still in the middle of—and then they’d pile into the station wagon to drive across town to church. When they got in the car Dani always felt full on more than food; she felt like part of a family.

It was the same at Bly, with Owen and Hannah and the rest of them. Dani came to love Owen’s full English, beans and tomatoes and all, and she loved Owen too—his intolerable puns, and the way Hannah would shake her head and roll her eyes in an elaborate show of annoyance even though they all knew she adored him for it. 

Most of all, she loved catching Jamie throwing her a knowing, sidelong glance, as if to say: _can you believe those two?_ _How can you be so bloody oblivious to the fact that you’re in love?_

Now she’s watching Jamie pour syrup on a stack of pancakes in a diner in southern Iowa, and she gets that same warm, full feeling. 

Jamie is bleary-eyed and grumpy from jet lag and lack of sleep, but Dani doesn’t mind. She puts one elbow on the table and settles her chin in her hand, watching as Jamie takes a sip of tea and immediately recoils. 

“Worse than mine?”

“Yours, Poppins, is dreadful. This? This is a crime against humanity.”

“But you added the milk and sugar yourself.”

Jamie glares at her across the table. “If the tea’s shite to begin with, there’s no salvaging it.”

They’re in the far corner of the diner, and there’s a general hum of conversation from the decent-sized crowd inside. Mostly middle-aged couples, plus one group of older men all wearing army veteran caps, who look like they must meet here often for coffee. 

It’s strange, being surrounded by this many people again after the isolation of Bly. It makes her feel… not nervous, exactly, but sort of antsy. Like maybe her beast doesn’t care for the company.

“So,” Jamie says, as if reading her thoughts, “we going to talk about what happened last night?”

All at once the warm, full feeling dissipates. 

Dani makes a noncommital noise, staring down at the scrambled eggs on her plate, but Jamie doesn't let it go.

“Your mysterious little stroll down the corridor,” she prompts.

Dani sighs, pushing a pile of eggs around with her fork. 

She’s been thinking about it, of course—about the moment she felt Jamie’s hand on her shoulder and realized she was no longer in the bath. It was as if she’d been sleepwalking, though she knew, somehow, that she’d been awake the whole time. She’d just gotten too relaxed. Too complacent. She’d forgotten, for a moment, to hold on tight enough to her own body. Her beast, sensing an opportunity, must have slipped into her skin. 

She can feel Jamie’s hand on her leg, underneath the table. “Whatever it is,” Jamie assures her, “you can tell me.”

“Yeah, no, I know. It’s just…” Dani trails off. She sets her fork down and looks up finally, meeting Jamie’s gaze.“This is good, right?” she asks, tentatively. “You and me?” 

Jamie’s expression softens, and her fingers squeeze gently on the top of Dani’s thigh. “Pretty good, I’d say.” 

“Yeah,” Dani agrees. “So. We’re here, away from Bly. Having a boring breakfast in a boring old diner, before we get in the car for a long, boring drive. And I just… I don’t want to mess that up.” 

Because she doesn’t want to think about ghosts or beasts in the jungle or strange, unexplainable memory lapses in the middle of the night. She just wants to think about Jamie—about her mussed hair and the little smear of syrup glistening at the corner of her mouth, and how strangely elegant her hands look while holding the cheap cutlery.

“I mean, can’t we just be boring for a while? Don’t we deserve that, after everything?” 

Her throat feels tight, the heaviness of _everything_ constricting her lungs, and she can tell by the expression on Jamie’s face that the same weight is pressing into her, too. The grief of finding Hannah’s body, of the funeral and Owen’s pain; of nearly losing Flora, and of course, the choice Dani made in order to hold onto her. The hours afterward when she couldn’t stop shivering because she was so cold, even wrapped in blankets and Jamie’s arms; she was just so _cold_ inside. 

It’s still too fresh, this grief they’re carrying. The names of all their ghosts seem to comprise a huge, heavy tome. It feels more manageable, though, when they lift it together—Jamie’s palms pressing up underneath Dani’s to help her bear the weight.

“Alright,” Jamie breathes. “I won’t pry, for now. If that’s what you want. But eventually—“

“Eventually,” Dani agrees. 

—

They’re heading west because Jamie wants to see the Rocky Mountains, and Dani doesn’t much care where they go as long as it makes Jamie happy.

Dani’s little hatchback, having spent a year sitting idle in her mother’s garage, seems happy to be out in the world again. The engine hums pleasantly as they zoom across southern Iowa at a steady 80 miles per hour. She’s content to do the driving, since Jamie is unused to, as she put it, driving on the _wrong side_ of the road. 

“Blimey,” Jamie murmurs, after several hours of traversing the gently rolling hills of the drift plain. “Not much out here, is there?” 

“You should see it up north. Nothing but cornfields and prairie grass.” Dani stars serenely out at the road ahead of her. “I used to hate it, but… I think I missed it, actually.” 

Jamie slides a hand across the emergency brake and lets it fall gently on Dani’s thigh. “It’s still home for you,” she says, but Dani can tell there’s a question in it.

“I don’t know,” she confesses. “I’m not… not really sure where home is now. But it’s familiar, and I guess that feels nice.”

The turn the radio on for a while, but when the signal starts to shift in and out Dani turns it off again, enjoying the silence and the gentle pressure of Jamie’s hand resting just above her knee. 

They cross the border into Nebraska and keep driving until the sunlight begins to slant and Dani’s legs are stiff and aching, and then they pull off the highway into the first town that seems large enough to host a decent motel. 

It’s pretty run down, but the room seems clean enough. They leave their bags and step back out into the cool evening air. Beyond the highway, hills extend in a dark silhouette across the southern horizon.

“Look here.” Jamie holds up a tourist pamphlet she swiped off the bedside table, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “Did you know, Poppins, that we’re spending the night in the cowboy capital of Nebraska?” 

Dani hums an affirmation, smiling at the way Jamie’s eyes are darting around as if expecting a band of horses to cross the street at any moment. 

“Well if you’d like to find the local watering hole, I think it might be that cheap-looking building marked ‘saloon’.” 

“Right you are, little lady!” She takes Dani by the elbow for a moment, steering her toward it. The touch is brief—not too long, nor too conspicuous—but enough for Dani to feel her there, and for the casual ease of the gesture to fill her with pleasure.

“Best stay out of trouble, Poppins,” Jamie teases. “Looks like the sheriff’s posted up next door.” 

“Uh oh.”

“I was a certified outlaw, after all. A wanted woman.” 

“Oh, you’re still wanted.” 

The way Jamie smiles at her when she says it--the look in her eyes so soft and adoring it’s almost reverential--makes Dani blush. 

The interior of the saloon is decorated like a historical replica, complete with mismatched stools and misaligned floor boards that creek underfoot. There’s a staircase leading up to a mezzanine that would, presumably, have been the town’s only rooms for rent back in the day. Or perhaps they hosted the saloon’s working girls, and were paid for by the hour. Old rifles are mounted along the walls, along with taxidermic animal heads and the bare skull and horns of a bull. 

Dani thinks it looked pretty hokey and a little distasteful, but Jamie seems utterly charmed by it. She heads to the bar for a couple of pints while Dani pulls out the roadmap and spread it across their table. 

“Where should we go after Colorado?” she asks when Jamie returns, setting the beers down and settling back in her rickety, spindle-backed chair. 

“Hmm, dunno.” Jamie takes a sip of her drink and shrugs. “Think I like the idea of staying off the beaten path. Small towns, strange roadside attractions. The authentic American experience.”

“Authentic.” Dani tilts her head, smiling. “Like this tourist trap bar set between a cowboy museum and a plywood building that says _jail_ in capital letters?”

Jamie laughs and kicks lightly at the leg of Dani’s chair. “Right, point taken. But it’s still authentic in a sense. I mean, it shows you what folk around here think about the history of the place.” She glances around, taking in a tacky and offensive wooden caricature of an Indian chief in the corner. “Reckon it’d be a different story if you asked the natives they ran off the land, though.” 

“Very different, yes.” She shakes her head. “I guess you’re right. I would have felt like I missed something if I’d never left London and seen the countryside.”

Jamie raises her glass in agreement.

“And if I’d stayed in London,” Dani continues, “I wouldn’t have met you.”

Jamie’s smile falters just a little. “You have might have done," she says slowly, "if you got there ten years earlier. Not sure you’d have liked what you saw, though.”

Dani bites her bottom lip. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “I was wondering about… that. About what you were, um, doing. Back then.”  As soon as she says it she notices the way Jamie’s gaze drops away from hers, fixing down on the floorboards, and immediately regrets asking. “We don’t have to talk about it,” she says quickly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

“S’alright,” Jamie says evenly. She leans stiffly forward, wrapping her hand around the pint glass in front of her. “What was I doing in London,” she repeats. “Well. Bit of stealing. Drugs, mostly. And girls.”

“Oh.” Right. Of course.  They’ve never talked about, well, _that_. But of course Dani assumed that Jamie had... experience. Of that kind. With women. A lot of women, probably. Who were much bolder and more adventurous than Dani.

“Do you, um. Do you miss it?” 

Jamie’s mouth tugs up at the corner. “Which part,” she says dryly. “Squatting in Brixton? Pawning old shite from the houses we broke into and burning rubbish for heat in the winter?”

Dani’s cheeks flush. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Jamie says, letting out a sigh of contrition and running a hand through her hair. “ _I’m_ sorry. I know you didn’t mean it like that, Poppins. It’s just… I’ve known a lot of haunted people, you know? Long before I came to Bly. Everyone I ran with in those days was haunted by something or another.” 

She swallows thickly, fingertip tracing a bead of moisture around the rim of her glass. 

“When you’re living like that you think—you tell yourself—that it’s perfect freedom. But it isn’t. It’s just trying to get away from whatever’s chasing you. One failed attempt after another.

Dani’s fingers itch to reach out and take hold of Jamie’s. It feels like there’s a fist squeezed tight around her heart. 

“I think,” she says softly, “that you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.” 

Because who else, having been so thoroughly bruised by so much unreciprocated love, would have had the courage to care for someone as flighty and fragile as Dani? 

But Jamie shakes her head. 

“Nah,” she says. “That’s _you_.” 

—

They stay long enough to have dinner and another beer each, and the tables fill up around them with other travelers who have, evidently, been likewise drawn to strange tacky charm of the place. 

They’re waiting for a waitress to return with the check, Dani’s hands absently opening and refolding her napkin, when she catches sight of a stain on the floor.

“Wonder when the last time they cleaned in here was?”

“Hm?” Jamie replies, following her gaze and frowning. “Why?”

“Well, look at it.” 

There’s a brown splotch on the floorboards beside their table, so large that Dani isn’t sure how she’s just now noticing it. 

“Look at what?” Jamie repeats, but Dani barely hears her.

Because as stares at it, the stain has started to look more distinct, its color changing from a faded brown to a rusty red, its surface taking on a wet sheen. 

It’s spreading, she realizes, the sticky ooze of it sliding wetly across the floor and dripping down between the loose boards. 

_Where is it coming from_ , she wonders frantically, a _ll this blood?_

And then there’s a loud _crack_ and a hot, searing pain, and Dani looks down at the red stain spreading across her abdomen and thinks, wildly, _I’ve been shot._

She gasps and doubles over, clutching at her stomach, and the warm blood is filling her hands and spilling through her fingers as she tries to hold it in, and she can’t speak, can’t even breathe, because she’s dying, she’s dying, she’s—

“Had a bit too much to drink,” she hears Jamie say beside her, and then Jamie’s hands are tugging her close, and somehow the two of them stumble across the restaurant and though the swinging doors.

Dani can breathe again, suddenly, and she’s choking on air, and her fingers are scrabbling wildly against the fabric of her sweater. But there’s no stain, no blood. She hasn’t been shot. She’s fine. She’s _fine_.

“It’s okay,” Jamie’s saying, stroking sweaty strands of hair away from her forehead. “It’s okay, I’ve got you. You’re okay. I’m here.” 

“I— I—“ Dani stutters, still gasping, with tears in her eyes and Jamie’s arms holding her steady. 

“It’s okay, Dani. I’ve got you.”

It takes several minutes to compose herself, during which time Jamie has led her over to a bench and sat her down, hands still stroking her hair. 

When she’s finally able to speak, she tilts her mismatched eyes up at Jamie and whispers, hoarsely, “I think I got caught in a shoot-out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the comments on the first chapter! I'm a bit slow at updating, but I'll do my best to stick with it. You can find me on tumblr at camhowes.


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